Recreation

I hate to be overly repetitive, but it seems like travel management is another example of where a Peoples’ Database would be helpful. We all weigh in from our own local experiences. For example, Mike commented “my experience most of the road closures that do occur are not a result of wildlife or other resource concerns, but a result of landowners, utility companies, and permittees.”

The Rio Grande’s neighbor to the west, the San Juan, had a travel management decision that seemed to be litigated either way they made the decision (that;s how it reached the RO).. the the TM decision from heck. And it was not about landowners or utility companies or permittees. But perhaps those are the intractable problems that just seem common because they are most noticeable? In my experience, new roads tended to be by landowners for access. And closures of FS roads at the request of landowners or others would seemingly require some kind of documentation? Perhaps outside of standard TM decisions?

In  the Peoples” Database, I would like to see, by year and District: miles of roads, temp or permanent, additions, closures, maintenance and remediation, by year, funding/work sources and purpose/reason. I think that would tell us a great deal, both locally and at broader scales for more detailed discussion.

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Anyway, here is the text of the One Voice/USA/ ORBA? letter to the Chief. Below are their specific concerns.  I see some commonalities with what others (including retirees) have said.  Note their focus on the importance of forest planning (NFMA).

A1. Repealing the TMR does not address the fact that most forest plans also require a travel planning process in their RMP. The US Forest Service had the authority to manage recreational usage before the 2005 TMR was finalized as they have broad authority to manage actions that are thought to be impacting resources negatively. Most forests we work with had plans in place to address open areas and motorized opportunities prior to the 2005 TMR being adopted.

A2. Revisions are needed to ensure that travel issues are meaningfully dealt with in a coordinated and thoughtful manner. Without basic coordination of goals and standards opportunities will be lost. Planners will never address one of our major concerns, which is when motorized trail opportunities are provided they are highly scattered across the landscape.

A3. Open riding on a landscape level will degrade opportunities and impact resources. Good planning focuses management resources. Without the ability to focus resources, the public will be provided an exceptionally poor experience as infrastructure, like parking lots, toilets, maps and other infrastructure will be difficult to provide. Maintenance of routes is critical to basic access in many areas that continue to face challenges with poor forest health. Without maintenance of these routes, access to these areas would be lost.

A4. Safety of users will degraded. We are intimately aware that all forms of recreation in the backcountry results in safety concerns. Some are preventable, such as the need to educate users of unavoidable width restrictions on trails or areas such as shelf roads/trails. Wheeled vehicles frequently get stuck on snowmobile trails as they don’t understand the opportunity provided by a groomed trail. Without basic management education of the public will be made more difficult.

B. Proposed standards and goals for a new management process to provide recreational access. Our Organizations would welcome the opportunity to work with the USFS to develop high quality recreational opportunities on forest land to fill the void currently being faced. Withdrawal of the TMR would place this type of discussion as a high priority for future administration. Future administration may have a VERY different opinion on priorities.

B1. Clearly repeal President Nixon’s Executive Order 11644/11989 as these goals conflict with federal law. Any effort to replace the TMR must include revocation of EO 3 11644 issued by President Nixon. The minimization criteria created by this EO are horribly out of date and conflict with Federal law.

B2. Adequate road and adequate trails must be prioritized as identifiable management goal. A major weaknesses of the current TMR is all decision making is local. No guidance or standards are provided for local managers other than minimizing impacts under EO 11644. As a result, local resources are commonly directed towards other resources that have standards and performance requirements.

B3. Summer and winter must remain separate planning processes. Summer and winter travel planning are entirely separate management processes to address entirely distinct management challenges. If these differences are not recognized, the public will lose open areas for winter immediately as the difference in planning process and goals is a constant point of education with new agency staff.
B4. We vigorously support the concept of “no net loss for trails and roads”. This type of standard must be applied in a new travel rule and a requirement for interim management as a new travel rule is developed. Our Organizations are all too familiar with how effective the “no net gain” standard has been on closing motorized opportunities.
B5. Road to Trail Conversions. Clear and extensive guidance on this planning process must be provided. This type of a standard has to apply to administrative routes until they were reviewed for suitability to convert to trails as mandated by existing TMR and legacy roads to trails. We are aware of a minimal number of TMP that have performed this analysis despite it being clearly required since 2005 TMR adoption.
B6. Open riding areas are highly valuable and unique opportunities that are not provided on forests at any scale. Any revisions to the 2005 TMR should stress the value of these opportunities where appropriate. Even comparatively small summer open areas simply don’t exist on USFS lands currently and these would be highly sought after opportunities on the landscape.
B7. Recreational opportunities are provided in balance with other values such as wildlife, water, grazing and other multiple uses. Balance avoids conflicts.

There have been rumblings that the FS is considering removing the Travel Management Rule.  In my view, it’s a bit like Roadless, or the NWFP, or the Planning Rule.. it has been in place for awhile and each could be improved, based on peoples’ experiences.   In some management circles, there’s the idea of “continuous improvement” in which performance is monitored and changes made.  That’s also adaptive management.  Conceptually, it’s not hard to do.  Once every, say ten years, convene people and have a public involvement process to suggest improvements, consider them, do an EIS (whoops), get litigated and continue.  Maybe it’s the EIS and get litigated part that defeats the concept of continuous improvement.  Anyway, once again, as with Roadless, some interest groups want to seek improvement rather than throwing out the whole thing.  Don’t we all want to see improvements?  And if the problem is trusting an R Admin to do it (which I understand), wouldn’t a solution be to do these reviews under a D Admin?  Otherwise we have a Very Intermittent Improvement process, or a Nonexistent Improvement Process. In a way, that’s what the Wildfire Commission was.  Anyway, here One Voice TMR outline for USFSis a link to the letter to the Chief from some recreation groups that points out improvements that could be made to the TMR.

NAFSR, the Forest Service Retirees, wrote a letter to the Chief, below are excerpts:

We understand that you are considering repeal of this 2005 rule. NAFSR would not oppose a review of, and possible revision of the rule. An important rule like this would likely benefit from a comprehensive examination and revision to assure its currency and address what might not be working well. We believe it should be easier to amend local travel management plans and maps that currently exist. Perhaps there is a way to better utilize categorical exclusions in the process? For instance, if an individual road currently closed should be opened, it should be easy to do so.

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We support the advice you recently received from the Motorcycle Industry Council, Recreational OHV Association, and Specialty Vehicle Institute of America urging improvements in, but not a total repeal of the rule. We believe most organizations and users across the spectrum of motorized to non-motorized users would favor revision and oppose a repeal.

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Here are some excerpts from what NAFSR received in reply:from the Forest Service

The Forest Service acknowledges resource management concerns related to the TMR and the need for regulations and maps for public motor vehicle access. We are working to rescind or revise the TMR to provide more flexibility for local decision making, streamline planning requirements and map updates, and increase access while protecting resources. President Trump’s Administration recently announced this action as part of the Spring 2025 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions.

Off-highway vehicle (OHV) recreation has grown tremendously, and technological improvements have made more vehicles available to the public. While some OHVs are bigger and more powerful, others are smaller and use low-power electric motors. The Forest Service and other land managers are facing new challenges with enforcement, user conflicts, and resource impacts as demand for OHV recreation access is increasing rapidly. Additionally, technological improvements have spurred promising new devices for individuals with mobility challenges. Regulations must be updated to allow new technology to benefit the public while conserving and protecting natural and cultural resources

Then there’s the question of considering one kind of recreation (motorized) separate from other kinds, bikes, horses and hikers, fisherfolk and hunters, campers, scenic drive folks, wildlife watchers and so on. We are talking the recreation infrastructure of each forest, which conceivably could or should be handled as pieces of a whole. It is truly a policy challenge to find the best spatial/temporal corral for negotiating and resolving policy issues.

But given we are talking about the TMR, the next post will get to some more ground-level concerns.

Recently I’ve been looking at some funding flows between foundations and various NGOs.. there’s a great deal of funding out there! My dream would be that some foundation would give funding to hire proven reporters to simply report the news in our area (federal lands) fairly and specialize in it, and make it available to the public. I think the closest we might get currently are some reporters at E&E News, which is not accessible to the public. It seems to me that taking the time to develop trusted sources of info will ultimately lead to more sustainable policy outcomes. More so than funding specific “anti-disinfo” efforts.  As we do in collaboration, go slow to go fast. If anyone knows of any likely funding sources, please let me know.

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It’s so predictable… the Admin proposes a reduced budget, people are rightfully concerned, I quote FDR:

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

Then Congress often, at the behest of interests who pre-date and post-date any given Admin, puts the funding back, or increases it.

Which, if you take it at face value, would be good news, right?

According to a story in E&E News by Marc Heller (as far as I can tell a highly knowledgeable and relatively unbiased knowledge source, but E&E subscriptions price ordinary folks out of the market).  The headline is “Congress bucks Trump to fix decrepit forest trails.”

Lawmakers increased funding for trails in the fiscal 2026 spending package awaiting President Donald Trump’s signature, moving in the opposite direction of what the White House was seeking as the forests’ declining condition makes headlines.

The package, which covers the Interior Department and related agencies, such as the Forest Service, sets trail maintenance at $22 million for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, or $2 million more than in fiscal 2025. The administration had requested $8 million.

So this would be a 9% increase, right?  Not great, but generally a good thing.

Marc brings up the fact that the FS has previously diverted bucks from what Congress intended, most notably from S&PF programs to employee salaries who took deferred resignation.  Apparently USDA defended that but the link to more info is paywalled. So that’s a possibility, but given what the Chief has said about recreation, it seems unlikely (to me).

“Shared stewardship and local collaboration are essential to improving forest health, wildfire resilience, recreation access and conservation outcomes,” Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz said in a column on the agency’s web site on Jan. 16.

Expanding access and improving the visitor experience are major priorities, Schultz said.

Below is the  “it’s always been the case they don’t have enough funding” argument – I believe that this might be the only issue that all TSW-ites agree on.

Groups like the American Hiking Society say they worry that pledges to work together won’t amount to much more than words if the administration’s budget priorities prevail.

“Asking federal partners to do more with flat or even declining financial support will break the system and result in further deterioration of trails,” Ray said in an email.

The administration’s focus was apparent in the budget request for the current fiscal year, released last spring.

In my experience, Congress doesn’t change that much, especially about popular programs with public support.  As I said about the macro land sales bill,  “that dog is very unlikely to hunt.” If they were going to go along with the Budget request, they would have. But OK, bad things could happen. Which makes me think about the ratio of reporting “things” to “bad things that could happen in the future”. There is a finite supply of things, but an infinite supply of “opinions of things that could happen in the future.” And sometimes I wonder if the discipline of print media (only so many things can fit on a page) led us in one direction, while infinite space leads to infinite opinions about infinite future events, the scarier the more clicks and the more money, and so on.  As yet there is no process to assess prediction performance.   But my guess is that Congress will continue to support trails.

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Last December, there was a story about a report that the FS rec folks had apparently shared with the WaPo and involving interview with two recreation retirees.  I covered it here. Interesting that Wyofile wrote about it today as a featured top story. The headline is: “Backlogged and DOGE-depleted: Forest Service report raises alarm over trail health”. It doesn’t seem to mention the budget increase.

What was interesting was that there was no mention of the Biden Admin being responsible for the “lack of seasonal people.” Marc Heller (whose reporting is unavailable to most people) has always pointed this out in relevant articles, but sadly, is not available to most people. It does make you wonder about “free” sources of information. In the Wyofile article:

What Lee observes is insufficient staffing and resources to tackle the amount of work necessary to steward and maintain the resource.

Most concerning, Lee said, “is the lack of seasonal people that do the work on the ground. They’ve been wiped out.”

That leaves permanent specialists without the crews to implement their programs and all but guarantees backlogs build up. “As far as maintenance, it just isn’t getting done because there’s not enough people,” Lee said.

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The story does say that there’s a disconnect between what Schultz says and what they hear from staffers.
Shultz says:

“Expanding that access and improving visitor experience is a major priority,” he wrote. “We’re modernizing trails, campgrounds, and facilities; improving roads and recreation sites; strengthening on-the-ground engagement; and using tools like Recreation.gov to help visitors plan safe, enjoyable trips.”

Then the same thing as we have heard:

Employees are being asked to do work not in their contracts as well as accomplish their normal workload with severely diminished resources, the employee said. In addition, a string of out-of-left-field directives and disruptions has raised stress to unacceptable levels as staffers fear for their jobs.

“It’s just exhausting, it’s not sustainable and there’s no end site,” the employee said. “I think everybody’s just kind of hanging in there because we really care deeply about our work as public servants and the mission of the Forest Service. But it’s also devastating on a daily basis.”

Nelson sees another disconnect. It used to be that the majority of agency staff, regardless of their title, had hands-on experience on a forest. That no longer seems to be the case, he said. Agency brass, he added, increasingly don’t seem to recognize the value of “just being up there” — spending time on and developing intimate knowledge of the land and water by sleeping under the stars, watching wildlife and enjoying the peace.

I don’t even know what this means.. some of our best employees in my last experiences (retired 13 years ago) were PMFs or from the military or had other non-traditional backgrounds (staff of politicians!). That was long before this Admin. And as we have seen, many of the last hired during the Biden Admin were from various backgrounds (whether they counted as brass or not). How many “brass” have the two sources interacted with?

Anyway, I just think the contrast between the E&E News reporting and the Wyofile approach (find sympathetic people and interview them about their opinions) is striking. The headline, of course, was about DOGE. More on that in the next post.

Some news stories have come out about this report, here’s the report itself.

As a trail non-expert (but frequent user) I have some specific questions about the information in the report, and you may as well. I’m hoping that currently working TSW folks can help with some of the answers.

Some of my thoughts on recreation programs in the FS over time..

Both things are true:
1. Recreation has never received the support (financial and other internal) it deserves, given the importance to the public.

2.a At the same time, FS management can be uneven…say budgets..
For example when Scott Fitzwilliams showed up to become Forest Supervisor on the White River, he said he was shocked by how low the recreation budget was compared to the Williamette, similarly Maribeth Gustafson felt the same way coming from the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. It does make you wonder how the national and regional recreation budgets are dispersed. Is it based on miles of trails, numbers of campgrounds, usage, or “what they got last year minus or plus”?

2b. Don Amador’s thoughts on the report as a partner are:

The report fails to highlight Forests that continue to manage high quality trail opportunities largely due to their pro-recreation culture, robust partnerships with OHV and other recreation groups, participate in diverse forest health collaboratives, and take advantage of non-federal funding such as state OHV grants or monies from
Industry grants from RRAF, Polaris, Yamaha, etc. Forests that don’t have those factors are often the ones that falter.

How can the FS make sure that each Forest and District has the requisite culture, horsepower, and access to internal support from other units, to do those things? Is it as simple as a tremendous enthusiast as a Supervisor, or Rec Program Manager or ???

II.Both things are true.

1. Partners including states and counties, contractors, concessionaires, permittees (like outfitter-guides clearing trails), user groups, volunteers and grantees, and internally G&A. contracting, recreation special uses, law enforcement and engineering (roads and bridges) allcontribute to NF recreation.

2. There is inherently governmental work that FS employees need to perform. It would probably make sense for the FS to be able to articulate that, and then determine to fund Districts and their internal partners to do that work.

Anyway, back to the report.

Background: The WO Trail Program engaged 290, mostly district-level staff, from all regions to assess current challenges to sustain trail operations and public trail access. Similar challenges are present in wilderness and developed recreation programs.

Bottomline: Public access, visitor satisfaction, and recreation-based economic contributions will continue to decline in 2026 and beyond without direction to prioritize investments in recreation generally and the trails program specifically. This would include action in hiring, clearer communication, and improvements around grants and agreement (G&A) management. Without this support, the agency risks losing decades of investment in trail infrastructure.

Current Challenges & Impacts

Districts lost up to 100% of trail staff. Critical vacancies, staff reassignments, seasonal hiring restrictions, and G&A delays are impeding trail maintenance and partner support. Many AmeriCorps and YCC programs are no longer available. The agency is losing out on tangible partner and volunteer contributions without the staff to coordinate and provide technical oversight. While partners and volunteers augment capacity, they cannot entirely replace agency staff.

There are crucial gaps that need to be filled. I agree, and I also agree that partners shouldn’t be replacing agency staff in some areas (like inspecting timber sales). In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to look across the agency at the old idea that some work is “inherently governmental.” And maybe use similar criteria across program areas? Or is that too entirely grand of a dream?

Hundreds of years of trail expertise lost. Lost skills are weakening the agency’s ability to implement technical projects and oversee partner, volunteer, and contractor work, which is leading to unpassable trails, unsafe bridges, and negative environmental impacts. Skill gaps are in dry stone masonry, rigging, blasting, saw use, construction, mechanized equipment, project management, and partner/volunteer coordination. Animal packer positions are vacant and pack stock programs are at risk; both are critical to keeping wilderness trails open.

Just a bit of history- I sat through many Region 2 budget meetings with the topic “the Pack String and who should pay for it.” I don’t think that this is new.

Widespread burnout and declining morale. Staff report high stress, unclear priorities, poor communication, inconsistent messaging, and misalignment of priorities and resources. Public access is a department priority, but recreation and trail access programs lack support to be effective. Low morale is leading to staff departures from agency and trail program, loss of skills and capacity, and poor customer service.

What kind of support exactly? Do they mean funding? Priority in G&A, contracting or hiring queues? Does this vary by Region or Forest?

Operational Gaps
• Millions of dollars of unspent grant funds have been returned due to key vacancies, no temporary workforce, and lengthy or stalled agreement processes. Districts are forgoing out-year grant opportunities, resulting in millions of dollars of unrealized future funding.

I thought I had heard the Chief say that temps would be back next year and that would be a priority. It sounds like the districts had the bucks but couldn’t get the grants out due to a lack of G&A folks? Or the grants didn’t go out because there was no one to give advice to the grantees? It sounds like the “unrealized future funding” might be future matches that are foregone. However as we reported, match requirements were removed from some kinds of grants. A more granular explanation might be helpful.

Many districts are unable to conduct basic trail maintenance. Front-country trails are being prioritized; backcountry trails are being abandoned. Deferred maintenance is exponentially compounding.
o Compliance issues are rising (e.g., illegal motorized use, user-created routes, trash). The public reports missing trail signage, trees blocking access, bridges in disrepair, and tread erosion.
Impact: Miles maintained down 22%, miles meeting standard down 19%. Lowest accomplishments in 15 years

My observation is that many back-country trails are maintained by user groups, and the illegal use and trash may be more location-specific. I’m not sure that FS presence is required to stop compliance issues, as there have never been enough employees to be there when folks want to be bad. It might be handy to have a map app of trail problems reported, so that volunteers could go and clean up trash, downed trees, etc., or avoid the area if illegal activities have been reporte

Contracting and agreement inefficiencies. Stalled and unfunded contracts and agreements are putting contractors and partners at risk of insolvency, damaging relationships, and reducing current and future ability to leverage federal investments and partner contributions

Is this true of every program (say wildfire, or fuels), or just the trails program? Are there not enough people in contracting and G&A, or are there reasons to believe they could be working more efficiently?

Immediate Needs

Expedite temporary seasonal hiring, especially externally-funded. Allow for extensions of externally-funded and disaster-funded Permanent Seasonal Employee (PSE) positions.

Maybe someone can explain the advantages of externals funding FS positions in recreation instead of hiring their own (like many grant recipients do). It seems like there are advantages to not going through the federal processes and requirements and drama. Maybe because there are certain people already trained and knowledgeable that they are funding?

Exclude temporary seasonals from agency headcount.

Or put them in a separate column and still count them?

Increase G&A capacity to support the robust partnerships in the trail program
Provide accurate, consistent messaging from leadership to all levels of the agency. Clearly articulate that recreation and trails are an agency priority.
Consider restoring direct hire authority for Youth Conservation Corps programs.
Invest in training in technical trail skills for staff, partners, and volunteers.
Support continued maintenance of the TACOS mobile app for trail data, condition and accomplishment reporting

When the Chief attended the Retirees’ Reunion in Missoula, he did stress the importance of the recreation program. I can’t remember exactly what he said but he said something about “clean outhouses” being a measure of how the FS is serving the public.

Voices from the Field

“My trail program is suffering the worst morale setbacks of all my district programs.” -Acting District Ranger
“To be honest, I heavily lean toward quitting and reinvention if we go another summer without seasonals. I have never lacked for motivation for trail work until now…it feels like we are on the verge of not passing anything on for the future, and that feels like 24 years of trails and wilderness work rolling back to the bottom of the hill.” -District Trail Manager
“I have an org chart of 20 rec staff… I have 6 left… and one GS7 tech to cover 200+ miles of trails, Wilderness, and volunteer coordination.” -District Trail Manager
“We lost 200 years of trail experience this year.” -Forest Recreation Manager
“With the recent loss of so many key positions, we will lose trails that we won’t be able to maintain.” -Forest Recreation Program Manager
“We were able to get through the summer doing basic clearing, which kept our overall accomplishment numbers fairly the same, but the reality is the other maintenance tasks such as drainage and brushing did not get done, which maybe wasn’t an issue this year, but the cumulative effects will be worse and worse. Then we’ll have a huge backlog, even worse than what it was before.” -District Trail Employee

As I wrote in my essay for Steve’s book 193 Million Acres, there are many of us who would support the program directly if we could. For example, there’s a trail I frequent where the concessionaire requires payment with the old slots and envelopes and cash technology. While the FS is not allowed to charge, it is not disallowed from asking for donations. Seems to me as if they could try a pilot at some heavily used site with good cell reception and a simple kiosk with a QR code. There is so much energy and enthusiasm around our love of National Forest places, isn’t there a way to harness that? Many of us would like to contribute our time, talent and money to support recreation, if we could in some way without placing stress on the remaining employees.

Maybe all it takes is some kind of external leader to unite all the people who recreate on forests into a broad and effective coalition. Which is conceivably what the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable is doing, and yet…

 

We’ve been talking about the importance of recreation on National Forests and the lack of adequate funding for the basics.  What’s puzzling to me (and I’ve mentioned this before) is why the States are so successful at lobbying, and recreation interests are not.

We are always hearing about the economic value of the outdoor industry, and how its much better for forests and communities than “extractive uses.”  Here’s a recent example from Utah.

“The reaction to that from the conservation community or the environmental community was ‘Oh, well, you can’t put a price tag on these places,’ or … ‘That’s not what we should be doing — it’s about these beautiful vistas,’” said Jessica Turner, president of the Outdoor Recreation Roundtable.

Her organization, referred to as ORR, is a broad coalition of outdoor recreation businesses and associations that come from nearly all subsets of the outdoor industry. One could say it represents the whole big tent of the industry, but Turner suggested that they’d also have to somehow include “yurt, glamp, lodge, RV,” as well as boat slips and then find ways to include engines, too.

whom does ORR represent? Member include states, the National Ski Association, the American Bus Association, RV industry associations, Boat US, Rivian, universities, the Diving Equipment and Marketing Association, Motorcycle, Snowmobiles and Booz Allen Hamilton (due to their contracting for Rec.gov).

There is definitely big money in all of these.. so here’s the mystery.. if the States could get IRA bucks for $1.5 bill (extra to Appropriated bucks) for the Urban and Community Forestry Program, why weren’t the states and industry asking for a big chunk for recreation (I could write the “climate resilience” verbiage myself). Or were they asking and some Congressional dynamics didn’t work to get the funding?

I’m not one of those who thinks that the FS should only be for NFS and R&D.. S&PF bucks wouldn’t be there except for States asking for it. Maybe States don’t lobby hard enough because the bucks don’t come to/through them.

According to ORR’s latest published research based on federal data, the outdoor recreation industry was worth $1.2 trillion in 2023, the most recent available data. That’s 2.3% of the U.S. gross domestic product.

Just the excise taxes on things like fuel and gas for ATVs, boats and purchasing the wide variety of required equipment brought in approximately $6 billion to the federal government’s purse that year.

For context, that means the outdoor recreation economy is larger than that of farming or mining. And it’s not that far from the oil and gas industry, either. That market was worth $1.55 trillion in 2024 and is approaching $1.6 trillion this year, according to Towards Chem & Materials’ last report.

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It seems to me that minerals, food and gas are necessary for recreationists to recreate. And we should always be careful to note that the ORR includes soccer balls and gardening tools.

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When the numbers are broken out to focus just on the money spent on public lands and waterways, their scale becomes clear. On public lands alone, the sector generates $128 billion a year. Recreational visitors fork over $72 billion directly to the federal government, with $27 billion spent at national parks, another $12 billion on U.S. Forest Service land and $6.2 on Bureau of Land Management land.

Some of my economist friends might say this shows the BLM needs to build more and/or charge more.

A similar approach of determining the actual monetary value of natural experiences was undertaken by the National Park Service and U.S. Geological Survey in a different study, where researchers determined an actual dollar value for the worth of a bear sighting. It’s more than one would think.

In both cases, when land and wildlife are left alone so Americans can recreate in the myriad ways they like to, they drive an awful lot of revenue for both the public and the private sector.

This is one of those “sounds vaguely plausible” statements.. and yet Americans have been happily recreating alongside oil and gas infrastructure, mining (at least in Colorado),  thinned forests and range allotments.  In real life, it doesn’t seem to be an either/or.

One of the more surprising statistics comes from the U.S. Forest Service. The report found that folks recreating in national forests brings in more revenue to the federal government than the timber industry. Recreation generates and maintains more jobs, too.

“Recreation … support(ed) 161,000 jobs, compared to the combined 103,200 jobs from forest products, livestock grazing, mineral extraction, and energy production,” the report states.

That statement was a tiny bit confusing as I read it it was another study that was done by the FS., but it’s more ORR. Inquiring minds might wonder about comparative pay in the different sectors.

In yearly sightings alone, individual grizzlies are worth $46,000 and individual black bears are worth $15,000. Said another way, the park’s grizzlies and black bears are worth about $10 million and $7 million, respectively, every year.

Enriquez and Richardson based their calculations on information in the Yellowstone Visitor Survey. That data set includes information that suggests travel costs, and also determines how much visitors value and prioritize seeing a bear and whether or not they saw one. Divining those numbers out yielded an accountable figure.

And, in economics terms, bears are great multiple use species, Enriquez explained. They have economic benefits and losses attached to them — similarly to other animals like elephants, moose, and wolves. To understand their value is less clear because, while the damages are easy to quantify in livestock depredation and property damage, the positive impact on tourism and subsequent local economies is less clear.

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“The way people talk about the economic value of lands it always has this really big bend towards ‘We’ve got to take something from it,’” Turner said. “We’re saying, sure, and also, you could just leave it there and build a trail or build a lodge and that’ll bring in revenue for a long time.”

So we have a very active industry… why are they not choosing to voluntarily pay into recreation/trails budgets or lobby for them? Or do they lobby, but what makes them unsuccessful?

First, apologies to Patrick for spelling his name wrong in the title of this piece as was sent out through email.  I fixed it online.

Patrick McKay wrote the below as a comment, but it has enough information for a post, plus he is currently litigating a travel management decision, so we are hearing from the horse’s mouth, or from the motor vehicle’s engine or whatever the analogy would be.  While researching this analogy,  I found an interesting piece on why ATVs are so loud.

Patrick’s piece also raised other questions.  If as Patrick says, and the general feeling I got from being around as the TMR was developed, was to have a standardized national process, then why didn’t it work that way in practice? Also what was the intent of Part A and how does that relate to what Patrick has observed?  Perhaps we need some retirees who were involved at the “intention” stage (2004-ish) and I know some of you are out there.

Also, Bill Avey mentioned in a comment that Citizens for Balanced Use waited to sue on the Helena-Lewis and Clark travel plan.  One idea that the Permitting Reform folks have is to shorted the litigation window, which has been negatively received by ENGOs.  So I’m curious about “why people wait so long to sue” and wonder whether anyone knows the reason in this case.

If I were in the Admin, I’d experiment with a six-pronged approach.  1) each Forest gets feedback on its own travel management, what’s working and what’s not, 2) FS employees are asked what are the problems and what could help, 3) national FACA committee of the usual interest groups reviews what’s rolled up by others and proposes changes (with some folks on the FACA committee chosen for implementation knowledge and skills) 4) internal committee reviews “will this actually work?” issues, 5) a technology sub-group that asks the question “how can current technologies help?” which would include folks from current apps like Onyx, All Trails and so on, and 6) can we harmonize this effort (at least mapping- with BLM)?

My experience with FACA committees on the Roadless Rules and others (as well as the Committee of Scientists)  is that they tend to be heavy on interest group reps and/or academics and sometimes lack implementation experience.  Perhaps a six-pronged approach  would better balance general principles with implementation, as it appears that this is where things went off the rails (or ATV trails). Also the views of the people (employees) carrying out the work tend to not enter the discussion at all, in my experience with NFMA and Roadless rules. This can easily be rectified.

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From Patrick:

I don’t think designated routes and MVUMs are going anywhere, and I doubt the Travel Management Rule will just be straight up repealed, but it will need to be replaced with something that is hopefully simpler and friendlier to motorized recreation.

As someone actively litigating a recent travel plan, it’s astounding how badly the existing TMR has been implemented and how bad the Forest Service is at following its mandates, to the point where I doubt any two forests have ever even used the same procedures in creating a travel plan. Every forest does it completely differently, and even things like the Travel Analysis Process that is supposed to be standardized isn’t, with different forests using widely different criteria and differing definitions of the same criteria (for example, some defining recreational use benefit to include the recreational experience of driving the road itself, while others only consider the destination at the end of the road). A simpler, more standardized process for travel management with clear criteria to consider could benefit everyone.

One thing that most people don’t realize is there are really two different Travel Management Rules rolled into one: the Subpart B route designation process that most people think of as a travel management plan, and the Subpart A minimum road system (MRS) designation that no one seems to know what it’s for, how to do it, or how it is supposed to relate to Subpart B route designations.

Most forests haven’t even tried to designate a MRS, and those that have, have followed totally different procedures and or tried to awkwardly tack it onto Subpart B planning in ways that haven’t held up in court. The Pike San Isabel NF seems to have weirdly conflated designating an MRS with the pre-NEPA Travel Analysis Process, even though FS handbooks explicitly say its supposed to be done through NEPA, which is now a primary issue in our litigation. I would love to see the Subpart A minimum road system section dropped from the TMR entirely, as that section has done nothing but cause confusion and litigation since it was adopted and is redundant with the actual route designations in Subpart B planning.

As for Subpart B planning, the Forest Service’s regulations have the same glaring flaw the BLM’s do — which is that there is no real consideration of motorized recreation benefits required at all. It’s interesting. The preamble to TMR explicitly said, “Motor vehicles are a legitimate and appropriate way for people to enjoy their National Forests—in the right places, and with proper management.” This sentence was supposed to be a compromise that ensured motorized recreation would be evaluated as legitimate multiple use. Yet, in the actual route designation criteria for motorized routes, recreation is almost nowhere to be found:
———
(a) General criteria for designation of National Forest System roads, National Forest System trails, and areas on National Forest System lands. In designating National Forest System roads, National Forest System trails, and areas on National Forest System lands for motor vehicle use, the responsible official shall consider effects on National Forest System natural and cultural resources, public safety, provision of recreational opportunities, access needs, conflicts among uses of National Forest System lands, the need for maintenance and administration of roads, trails, and areas that would arise if the uses under consideration are designated; and the availability of resources for that maintenance and administration.

(b) Specific criteria for designation of trails and areas. In addition to the criteria in paragraph (a) of this section, in designating National Forest System trails and areas on National Forest System lands, the responsible official shall consider effects on the following, with the objective of minimizing:

(1) Damage to soil, watershed, vegetation, and other forest resources;
(2) Harassment of wildlife and significant disruption of wildlife habitats;
(3) Conflicts between motor vehicle use and existing or proposed recreational uses of National Forest System lands or neighboring Federal lands; and
(4) Conflicts among different classes of motor vehicle uses of National Forest System lands or neighboring Federal lands.

In addition, the responsible official shall consider:

(5) Compatibility of motor vehicle use with existing conditions in populated areas, taking into account sound, emissions, and other factors.
———

While “provision of recreational opportunities” is listed in the general criteria in paragraph a, the specific mandatory criteria in paragraph b are all negative impacts to be “minimized”. Those are the only ones courts have said must be evaluated for each specific route, and the only ones with a required objective. The general criteria (which is the only place positive benefits of roads are listed) must only be “considered”, and there is no mandate to maximize recreational opportunities to balance with minimizing impacts. The focus of travel planning thus becomes solely about minimizing impacts rather than providing recreational opportunities, which is at best an afterthought.

In practice, only the most general analysis of recreational opportunities forest-wide is included in travel planning documents, while every individual route gets a detailed report of its negative impacts. At most, there might be an arbitrary recreational use benefit score assigned to individual routes (defined inconsistently as mentioned above), which the public rarely has any input on, and which is rarely enough to outweigh high scores for negative impacts. This makes closure the default designation and makes it extremely difficult to justify keeping routes open.

While the TMR’s preamble paid lip service to treating motorized recreation as a legitimate multiple use, the actual rule clearly does not, but frames motorized recreation as a second-class use to be tolerated only when it can be affirmatively shown to have minimal negative impacts on anything else. And by allowing motorized recreation only where impacts on non-motorized recreation are minimized, it sets up a clear hierarchy where non-motorized recreation is prioritized and the desired experience of non-motorized users trumps that of motorized users.

I would like to see the TMR amended to actually treat motorized recreation as a legitimate multiple use, giving it equal weight to non-motorized recreation and requiring an individual evaluation of recreational benefits for every route. For any route with at least moderate recreational value, the burden of proof should be on the Forest Service to prove that closure is the only feasible way to mitigate serious specific existing impacts (not just location based risks of impacts like forests usually consider currently). Especially considering most national forests have already been through at least one round of travel planning under the 2005 TMR, the default expectation really should be that every motorized route currently open should remain open permanently unless there is some really strong reason to close it.

One of the more interesting patterns I’ve observed is that we develop regs to do certain things.. but checking on whether the reg actually does those things, whether the reg works well or works at all, are not part of the design. So we go through periods of disgruntlement (sometimes 30 years or more) and if it adds up to enough, on some unknown scale, we throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. Instead of continual improvement, we have slow degeneration and maybe starting over from scratch.

Here’s what the 2005 Summary says in part the Travel Management rule was intended to do.

The clear identification of roads, trails, and areas for motor vehicle use on each National Forest will enhance management of National Forest System lands; sustain natural resource values through more effective management of motor vehicle use; enhance opportunities for motorized recreation experiences on National Forest System lands; address needs for access to National Forest System lands; and preserve areas of opportunity on each National Forest for nonmotorized travel and experiences.

The Travel Management Rule Highlights According to an old Forest Service link.

• The rule requires each national forest or ranger district to designate those roads, trails, and areas open to motor vehicles.
• Designation will include class of vehicle and, if appropriate, time of year for motor vehicle use. A given route, for example, could be designated for use by motorcycles, ATVs, or street-legal vehicles.
• Once designation is complete, the rule will prohibit motor vehicle use off the designated system or inconsistent with the designations.
• Designation decisions will be made locally, with public input and in coordination with state, local, and tribal governments.
• Designations will be shown on a motor vehicle use map. Use inconsistent with the designations will be prohibited

It’s hard to tell from this description exactly what the problems are. I do remember certain Districts getting litigated no matter which decision they made.

Here’s an interesting E&E News story from today.

The Forest Service plans to nullify regulations governing the use of off-highway vehicles on national forests, potentially opening trails to greater use of ATVs after next year. The agency listed the proposed repeal on its latest regulatory update, calling it a response to legal challenges and a part of the Trump administration’s broader government streamlining efforts.

In addition, the Forest Service said, voiding the 20-year-old regulations would support more decision-making at the local level, although the agency didn’t say what might replace the rules if they’re jettisoned.

I’d like to know more about how that would work. Maybe decision makers on forests would have more latitude?

A notice of proposed rulemaking could come by next August, according to the regulatory update. An Agriculture Department spokesperson said existing travel management plans on individual forests would remain, where established.

I wonder how many forests don’t already have them, and how many are in litigation.

“The concept is to reduce duplicative and onerous planning requirements needed to update or establish travel management plans and maps,” USDA said. “It has not yet been determined if and how alternative regulations would be amended.”
Repealing the regulations — called the travel management rule, implemented in 2005 — could satisfy organizations calling for more access to trails and old logging roads for all-terrain vehicles, four-wheelers, snowmobiles and similar recreational vehicles. But motorized ATVs have environmental impacts that spurred the Forest Service to write the regulations in the first place.

It seems to me that there are actually three issues. 1. FS can’t afford to keep all trails open and can’t find sources of funding or volunteers to helpl. 2.  People (horses, bikers, hikers) tend not to like sharing trails with ATV folks,  3. Some ATVers do illegal things, and they are more problematic and obvious than when other users do illegal things, 4. Some people have an anti-ATV bias (aka the pyramid of pristinity).

Note that this quote (and travel management was intended, if I recall correctly) to designate trails and then be able to keep people from going everywhere.  But even then game retrieval was an issue, as in how far off the road can you go with a vehicle to retrieve game?

The management rule calls for forest supervisors to designate which roads or trails on individual national forests are open to off-highway vehicles. The designations are shown on motor vehicle use maps; areas not designated are considered off-limits to the recreational vehicles.

Paper MVUMs are not always easy to use (even for non-motorized users who want to check things)  and I don’t know whether there are better versions or apps or whatever.

Here is one point of view:

Individual forest transportation plans resulting from the rule have sparked litigation, including a 2022 lawsuit by recreational vehicle riders and Citizens for Balanced Use, contending that new restrictions at the Helena National Forest in Montana were too broad. In that case, the organizations said, many areas where motorized vehicles had been allowed for decades were made off-limits. The groups said the Forest Service overlooked the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirement to assess economic and social, as well as environmental, impacts from expelling motorized vehicles. The rule’s critics say it’s had the opposite of the intended effect in parts of Western states, concentrating environmental impacts in the smaller number of places where vehicles were allowed access, while escalating conflicts between the Forest Service and the public.

“The rule has failed its stated purpose and produced widespread unintended consequences,” said Don George, president of Forest Access for All, based in Baker City, Oregon.  The Forest Service already has ample authority through the National Environmental Policy Act, the National Forest Management Act and local forest orders to determine which areas should have vehicle access, said George, whose organization opposes any substitute regulations that would restrict access.

I thought that the TM rule was a national structure for making those decisions, and regardless of the rule FS folks could make any decisions they want.  Hopefully folks on TSW can explain this better.

Here’s another point of view:

Groups promoting greater access to public lands have been fighting the travel management rule for years. But some organizations, including national groups representing the motorcycle and off-highway vehicle industries, say the regulations should be improved — not repealed.

Three organizations — the Motorcycle Industry Council, the Specialty Vehicle Institute of America and the Recreational Off-Highway Vehicle Association — urged the Forest Service in October not to abandon the travel management rule. Instead, they said, officials should leave the basic regulation in place and work on its flaws.

Despite its shortcomings — including shutting access to areas that long had it — they said, the rule has documented many places as open to off-highway vehicles and led to the creation of the first motor vehicle use maps to guide forest visitors.

Repealing the rule, they warned, could roll back “hard-fought gains” that the regulation made possible.

“The Associations believe that travel planning is a critical tool to promote high-quality sustainable recreation for all public land users, mitigate resource damage, and conserve our shared public lands, and ensure benefits for current and future generations,” they said.

And from Rasmussen of Back Country Horsemen:

“We often overlook the fact that, decades ago, there was constant struggle and acrimony among forest visitors when there were few restrictions and few of us had trails designated specifically for our use,” Rasmussen said in an email Monday.

He added, “Some bad actors caused a lot of damage. We don’t want to return to the days when access for motorized trail use was pitted against those who seek a relatively quiet and peaceful forest experience.”

This seems to be a bit of #s 2 and 3. It seems to me that we can agree that motorized vehicles should not be allowed on all trails, nor off-trail.There are fuzzy areas that we should know well by now (e.g. game retrieval) and maybe have solutions that work?

Folks need maps that work well and we need law enforcement. So what are the differences between rule, no rule and improved rule?

*************

2005 was twenty years ago.  Since then we have apps such that mapping should be a breeze.  And maps and locations are now available on your phone. If cows can use virtual fencing, why not motorized vehicles?  Any vehicle to be used on NFs or BLM could  be required to register (enough to pay for a GPS transmitter).  If a vehicle is off the approved map, it would issue annoying beeping noises and finally cause the vehicle to lock up, or send a message to law enforcement. It seems to me that in this day and age we can do better than restricting the access of good guys based on the behavior of bad guys. Because having the good guys in the woods is a generally good thing.

Speaking of bad guys, I wish this reporter had asked the Angeles LEOs for details on where these gang activities occurred.

*****

While looking at the Team USDA Reinvention Summary, from September 1994, I ran across this..

Does anyone have copies of that document or follow-up decisions?

I’ve always found some of the recreation discourse to be complex

Sometimes, folks will use “outdoor recreation economic benefit” numbers to argue for Wilderness, and yet the economic benefit numbers include RVs and OHV’s (and possibly soccer balls, sometimes it’s hard to tell.) That’s always been a bit puzzling to me.

Then there is the general feeling that federal lands provide recreation that communities make money from, so federal taxpayers should pay for it.  Let’s look at this news story, for example. This is a Colorado Sun story about how the locals are and have been stepping up in Colorado. The story is from June 4 and incorporates concerns about the GMUG’s toilet cleaning contract and DOGE.  Although Chris French said they were working on those contracts.

Anyone who remembers locked toilets at trailheads and boat ramps during the early months of the pandemic in 2020 knows that does not stop people from pooping. That could lead to widespread closures of those public lands as the government grapples with serious health and safety concerns.

(Local U.S. Forest Service officials have been ordered not to speak with the media and direct all inquiries to regional and national offices that do not respond beyond saying they have received the request for comment.)

I haven’t tried separately from reporter Blevins, so we don’t know.

I’d only add, there were not “widespread closures” of FS land then and are unlikely to be now. And the pre-Trump loss of this years’ seasonals seems to be elided with Trump Admin buyouts or layoffs(and I thought those laid off were rehired?). Indeed it is hard to keep up.

It’s interesting that different counties have different views (or at least individual Commissioners do).

Could local support set a dangerous funding precedent? 

There’s also some concern that if local communities contribute financial support to federal management of public lands, budget-slashing bureaucrats may pinch future funds.

Hmm “budget-slashing bureaucrats”.. are those the same as federal elected officials- or federal employees?

What if they say ‘See, you don’t need us. You can take care of this,’” Gunnison County Commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels said. The county actually declined to pitch in for the backcountry Forest Service workers, not because of a lack of appreciation for public lands but to save funding for health and human services that could be slashed as the federal government shrinks.

For those of you not familiar with Colorado counties, the other counties mentioned are more wealthy than Gunnison County based on per capita income, according to Wikipedia.

Local budgets — even in communities where second homeowners pay big property tax bills — feel the strain of funding public land management, Daniels said.

I went down a bit of a side trail here. How did second homeowners get into the mix? Don’t primary homeowners also pay big property tax bills? Then I cam across this interesting NWCCOG (Northwest Colorado Council of Governments) report from 2024

. Quality of life perception is dramatically different between some respondent cohorts. Full-time, year-round residents who own or rent their residence feel dramatically more negative about the impacts of the tourism economy and QoL than their Second Homeowner counterparts that either do or do not rent their home as an STR. These residency-based
differences are the most pronounced in the study.

The whole report is very interesting. When we think about FS recreation, we tend to think about everyone, local and others. But the communities clearly have a “tourism economy” which can result in overcrowding and lessening the quality of the experience for residents. So perhaps it makes sense to think about “tourism industry-based recreation.”

Anyway, back to the original story.

“I don’t want to create the case for the federal government to divest,” she said. “We just don’t have the income the federal government does to absorb the magnitude of this work for very long at all even with the help of our partners. We can do this as a Band-Aid but we don’t have the funding streams to do it for the long term.”

Pitkin County is supporting two backcountry rangers through the county’s sheriff’s office, giving the rangers the ability to enforce rules around fires and reservations in heavily-trafficked zones.

I hadn’t heard of this approach before to ramp up LEO presence.

Pitkin County Commissioner Patti Clapper is not too troubled by setting a precedent for local-over-federal funding of public lands because the county – like Eagle, Gunnison and Summit counties – has been supporting seasonal Forest Service workers for several years.

“We see this more of a continuation of efforts we have done in the past to maintain our focus on public safety and forest safety,” Clapper said.

Eagle County and its towns launched its Front Country Ranger program in 2018 as “a way to enhance support for the Forest Service,” said Marcia Gilles, Eagle County’s first director of open space and natural resources, who spent more than two decades working for the Forest Service and Park Service.

“The Front Country Rangers was about enhancing a seasonal program we considered underfunded and now we are the sole support system,” Gilles said. “If it was not for this program, we would not have anyone out in a forest that sees 18 million to 20 million visitors a year.”

While Eagle, Gunnison, Pitkin and Summit counties are well-positioned to weather the loss of staff in public lands, the counties’ seasonal programs “are not sustainable,” Gilles said.

“It’s a stewardship responsibility of the federal government to support the Forest Service management,” she said. “We do have a recognition that there is a community-level need for support as well. This is about stewardship and partnership.”

Still, Daniels worries that local funding could lead a newly overhauled federal government to scale back support for public lands. That would create a patchwork of management policy that may hinder access and injure wildlife and habitat.

“If this becomes a state and county or regional management system, we could see a huge breakdown in what public lands mean,” Daniels said.

***************
So if we grant that communities and the feds have responsibilities, what should those be? Should it vary by the wealth of the communities, or by the amount that Forest-based recreation contributes to the local economy? Does advertising for more visitation bring with it responsibility to address the impacts?

 

With all that’s going on at the Forest Service, we’ve been remiss at rounding up recreation news, so here goes. Please add your own in the comments.

1. Lake Tahoe Basin Wide Trails Analysis Project

I couldn’t find much detailed news coverage of this decision, but I think it’s pretty interesting what the Lake Tahoe folks can do. Note what they did with adding trails. Here’s what the decision is doing (from the Draft Decision Notice September 2024).

Designate existing non-motorized trails as open to e-bikes (112.6 miles)
 Change existing motorcycle trail designation as open to e-bikes only (1.1 mile)
 Designate existing non-motorized trail as open to motorcycles (3.8 miles)
 Decommission Trails (2.5 miles)
 Construct new trails open to e-bikes (27.5 miles)
 Construct new non-motorized trail (14.7 miles)
 Construct new motorcycle trails (4.2 miles)
 Designate existing closed road as open to e-bikes (2 miles)
 Designate existing unmanaged trail as non-motorized (1.7 miles)
 Construct three new trailheads (Pine Drop, Brockway Summit, Elks Point). Trailheads would include a paved
parking lot and visitor information signage. Restroom facilities may be included.
 Upgrade stream crossings
 Upgrade trails for Best Management Practices
 Install wayfinding and interpretive signage
 Update the LTBMU Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM)

Here’s the need for change:

There is a need to provide a sustainable trail system meeting National Forest Trail Management Standard, including low-maintenance design principles, diversity of experience and challenge opportunity, and appropriate trail use guidance.
 There is a need to update the wheeled vehicle designation of the National Forest System trails and roads to reflect the use of e-bikes and update the Motor Vehicle Use Map to reflect these changes.
 There is a need to provide trail system connectivity to logical access points, such as trailheads, public transit routes, community centers and neighborhoods, and underutilized areas.
 There is a need to manage and upgrade some existing unmanaged trails.
 There is a need to provide a trail system that incorporates “stacked loop” design – trail experiences of different length, type and challenge exist from common access points.
 There is a need to provide Aquatic Organism Passage at trail crossings.
 There is a need to provide additional capacity on popular recreation trails.
 There is a need to limit potential impacts related to use conflict, or overuse of popular trail sections and areas.

Seems like many of these would apply in many places; perhaps other forests don’t have the capacity to take this on.

2.  The Continuing Steamboat Mountain Bike Trail Controversy

There’s plenty of coverage of this one. Here’s a story from 2019.  From last month:Forest Service changes to Rabbit Ears Pass mountain bike project have advocates hopping mad

That seems like six years, almost as long as fuel treatment project time frames.  It makes you wonder why people can agree in the Lake Tahoe Basin, but not in Steamboat?

3. Trail Stewardship Act Funding

Here’s another recreation story about folks helping out with FS work this year, this time rafting.

Aherin, of Lewiston and Salmon, Idaho, owns Idaho River Adventures and is president of the Middle Fork Outfitters Association. During the chaos that followed the Trump administration’s decision to dismiss probationary federal employees, his organization worked with the Idaho congressional delegation to lay the groundwork for a solution.

The Middle Fork Outfitters Association has been using the Trail Stewardship Act to help the Forest Service maintain the roads that provide access to Boundary Creek. The 2016 law allows holders of special use permits to use the money they are required to pay the Forest Service (3% of their gross profits) for trail maintenance and to care for other recreational infrastructure.

Before the act, outfitters would write a check to the federal government. Now they can write checks to contractors who perform maintenance work and then use the receipts to offset what they owe the feds.

This summer, Aherin and other outfitters will divert the money they owe the Forest Service to the Selway Bitterroot Frank Church Foundation. In turn, the group will hire four people to work as checkers at put-ins and two to work on Forest Service river patrol crews.

“It is really in line with our mission, it’s just not something we have done before,” said Ryan Ghelfi, executive director of the foundation.

The group typically hires trail crews and wilderness rangers to help the agency care for the Selway-Bitterroot and Frank Church-River of No Return wilderness areas that overlay much of central Idaho’s backcountry. Working on the river is new and so far a temporary part of the group’s work.

Ghelfi said the people the foundation hires will work under the direction of the Forest Service and at least for now, it is just for this summer to help the agency deal with unexpected circumstances.

“The way things are right now, it’s something our organization needed to be able to say yes to and we did.

4. Moth Plan for Shoshone

Very interesting and comprehensive story from Wyofile on managing moth/grizzly tourism. Who knew there was moth/grizzly tourism? I try to avoid grizzlies, myself.

The Shoshone National Forest has been assessing its moth sites in consideration of management changes since 2015, when it completed its Forest Plan. Before that, around 15 years ago, Yellowstone region managers prioritizing grizzly bear issues identified the moth sites as a top-three issue in the ecosystem, U.S. Forest Service biologist Dan Tyers told the room in Cody.

5. FS and BLM Recreation in Wyoming Compared: BLM Not Having Problems

This is coverage of the Wyoming Outdoor Roundtable

The panel was part of the Wyoming Outdoor Recreation Summit, which gathered businesses, agencies and recreationists in Laramie to talk about issues like access and economic opportunities. Though Ashcroft and his fellow panelists discussed longstanding challenges, participants were keen to hear about recent DOGE impacts on Interior Department agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, Park Service and Bureau of Land Management.

“Is there going to be a hair-on-fire moment when the bathrooms aren’t getting cleaned and maybe the campgrounds are getting closed?” asked Wyoming Office of Outdoor Recreation Manager Mark Tesoro, who moderated the panel.

“One forest may have lost their entire special uses program, which impacts guiding and outfitters, where another forest may be whole in that region,” Ashcroft said. “So it truly is varying by district to district, forest to forest, that you’re going to see impacts.”

Regardless, he said, “the agency’s priority is to keep sites open, and so we are going to prioritize that to the extent possible.” Sites may, however, not be open at the same level of service that users have enjoyed in the past.

“There could be sites that historically had running water, that may not have running water,” he said. “There could be sites that had trash collection that may not have trash collection this year.”

***

Trail maintenance will be a big challenge, Ashcroft added, so users could encounter more debris or downed trees.

Agency leadership wants to keep decision-making as local as possible, Ashcroft said, and has identified safety, fire, timber and recreation as priorities. “I see us trying to focus what we have on those priorities, recreation being one of those priorities.”

***

Jennifer Fleuret McConchie, Wyoming BLM deputy state director and the third panelist, doesn’t think the federal challenges will prevent the BLM from getting its work done this season, she told the crowd.

Wyoming BLM staff, key to Trump’s “energy dominance” strategy, have been largely spared by DOGE. 

“I don’t think any of the challenges coming to face us this year are going to stretch our ability to meet those challenges and work with our partners to get the work done where it needs to be done,” Fleuret McConchie said.

Knowing what we know, I wonder why the FS would have more problems than the BLM.  Possibly because of the last Admin’s getting rid of temps for  this year, plus the FS having 5K or so probationary hires?  Or is it a budget thing? Certainly DOGE could tell a BLM minerals employee from a recreation employee. I’m guessing it might be more complicated than just “they have minerals there.”

Anyway, this might be a year to recreate on BLM sites preferentially.